Public annotation — Why this follow-up OIA matters

This request builds directly on the outcome of FYI OIA #33398 (NZDF OIA ref: 2025-5626), which sought information about the Veterans’ Advisory Board’s (VAB) visibility of veteran charities and community-based support, and whether the Board had considered navigation or signposting gaps outside statutory entitlements.

That earlier OIA is now closed, following a formal response dated 10 February 2026. The response confirmed that:
• The VAB does not hold or maintain any list, directory, register, or briefing material identifying veteran charities or community organisations.
• No briefings, reports, minutes, or advice since at least 2019 were identified that address navigation, signposting, or visibility of non-statutory veteran support.
• The agency relied on section 18(e) of the Official Information Act (information does not exist or cannot be found) for the substantive parts of the request.
• Readers were directed only to already-public VAB covenant/Kawenata material, which does not address charity visibility or navigation in any operational or governance sense.

That outcome is significant in itself. It establishes, on the public record, that there is no documented visibility framework, workstream, or recorded consideration at VAB level dealing with how veterans are expected to navigate non-statutory support (charities, community organisations, informal assistance) alongside statutory Veterans’ Affairs pathways.

However, that earlier request was intentionally framed to test whether such material existed.
It did not test why it does not exist.

Purpose of this follow-up request

This follow-up OIA does not seek lists, directories, registers, or inventories of charities again. That ground has already been covered and closed.

Instead, this request is narrowly designed to test governance decision-making and prioritisation, specifically:
• whether the absence of visibility or signposting has ever been considered, debated, or consciously deprioritised;
• whether any risk, disadvantage, or access implications for veterans (including medically vulnerable, rural, or digitally excluded veterans) have been identified in records;
• whether responsibility for navigation outside statutory entitlements has been explicitly assigned, deferred, or assumed to sit elsewhere (e.g. Veterans’ Affairs NZ operations, the charity sector, or individual veterans themselves);
• and whether focus on other workstreams (such as Covenant / Kawenata development) has been accompanied by recorded decisions not to address navigation or signposting at the same time.

In short, this request tests decision-making and reasoning, not the existence of artefacts.

Why this is a legitimate next step

Where an agency responds under section 18(e) that information does not exist, it is both lawful and appropriate to then ask whether records exist that explain:
• how that situation arose,
• whether it was intentional,
• and whether risks or impacts were considered.

This request therefore seeks to illuminate the “negative space” left by the earlier response: the governance logic (if any) behind the absence of visibility and navigation mechanisms that many veterans rely on in practice.

Public interest

Veterans routinely interact with a mix of statutory and non-statutory supports, particularly where health, disability, financial stress, or transition issues are involved. Understanding whether national-level advisory structures have considered (or consciously not considered) navigation and signposting is a matter of legitimate public interest in veteran wellbeing, system design, and accountability.

This request is framed to support transparency around how veteran support systems are shaped, rather than to advance any individual dispute or advocacy position.

Related requests (context and pattern)

This request sits within a small but connected group of Official Information Act requests examining how veterans are expected to navigate support systems outside core statutory entitlements, and whether governance bodies have visibility of, or responsibility for, non-statutory support pathways.

Related FYI requests:

• FYI #33398 — Request for information on Veterans’ Advisory Board visibility of veteran charities and advice on signposting/support gaps (NZDF)
Outcome: The NZDF confirmed that the Veterans’ Advisory Board does not hold lists, directories, or briefings relating to veteran charities, community support organisations, or navigation/signposting outside statutory entitlements, and identified no internal records addressing such gaps.

• FYI #33397 — [Insert short title if available] (NZDF / Veterans Affairs context)
Relevant to understanding how veteran support responsibilities are scoped, framed, or limited within existing governance and advisory structures.

• DIA charity / community organisations OIA (Department of Internal Affairs)
Provides complementary context on how charities and community organisations are regulated or recorded at a system level, and highlights the disconnect between charity-sector visibility and veteran-facing navigation or signposting mechanisms.

Why this matters

Taken together, these requests establish a growing public record showing:

• no central visibility of veteran-focused charities at advisory level,

• no documented consideration of navigation or signposting gaps,

• and a lack of clarity about where responsibility for non-statutory veteran support sits.

This follow-up request seeks to understand the decision-making and prioritisation behind that absence, rather than re-litigating whether directories or lists exist.

Public-facing annotation: What we can now quantify (Charities Register), and why it matters for veteran navigation

This thread is about a structural visibility gap: when an agency (here, NZDF/VAB) says it holds no list, directory, or briefing material covering veteran-facing charities/signposting, that is not a trivial “admin” issue — it has real-world consequences for veterans who are expected to navigate fragmented civilian support systems while managing service-related health and vulnerability.

One useful way to show the scale of what “visibility” would mean in practice is to ground it in the size of the charity sector.

How many registered charities are there in New Zealand right now?
The Department of Internal Affairs (Charities Services) public register indicates 29,431 “Registered” charities (count returned directly from the register’s open data feed). 

That is the current baseline: tens of thousands of charities exist nationally, across every domain (health, disability, housing, advocacy, emergency relief, etc.). In that context, a “we don’t hold any list / directory / briefing material” response is not just a refusal outcome — it confirms there is no internal mechanism for the VAB to consistently see, map, or assess the broader support landscape that veterans actually rely on when statutory entitlements don’t cover the need.

How many of these are directly veteran-focused?
There is no single official public metric that cleanly answers “how many are veteran-focused” because:
• “Veteran-focused” is not a single mandatory category in public reporting; and
• many veteran-support entities are multi-purpose (e.g., welfare + community + remembrance + emergency relief) and may not use consistent naming.

What we established so far (charities scale vs “veteran visibility” gap)

1) How many registered charities exist in New Zealand?

The most recent official “whole-of-sector” count I could verify is from Charities Services (DIA) in its 2024/2025 “year in numbers” snapshot. It states:
• There are 29,208 registered charities in New Zealand (as at 2024/2025). 

This matters because it gives the scale of the charity sector that veterans (and their families) may need to navigate when they fall outside or between statutory entitlements.

2) How many of those are “veteran-focused” charities?

A precise, defensible number is not available from a single official publication, because Charities Services does not publish (in the snapshot) a category like “veterans” as a standalone count. The Charities Register is searchable publicly, but there is no official “veteran charities total” figure published in the way “total registered charities” is published. 

So the only credible way to answer “how many are veteran-focused” is to use a replicable search method on the Charities Register with strict inclusion rules (e.g., the organisation’s name and/or stated purposes explicitly indicate veteran/ex-service support), and then verify “Registered” status entry-by-entry.

What we can say safely at this stage is:

• There are clearly veteran-related organisations on the Register, but

• any number you publish must be tied to a transparent keyword logic + verification rules, or it can be attacked as cherry-picked.

3) Why this links back to your VAB OIA finding

Your now-closed NZDF/VAB OIA (#33398) established (via the agency’s s18(e) position) that the VAB does not hold a list/directory/briefing set identifying veteran charities and community support organisations. In plain terms: the “front-door navigation map” isn’t held in the place many veterans would expect.

Set against the verified scale of 29,208 registered charities, the gap is not trivial: it implies veterans may be expected to self-navigate a very large sector without an identifiable VAB-held “visibility layer” for non-statutory supports.

4) Important limits (so the annotation can’t be undermined)

• The 29,208 figure is official but it is a snapshot (“as at 2024/2025”), not a real-time counter. 

• A “veteran-focused charity count” is not officially published as a single figure, so any public claim must be framed as “count using replicable register search logic”, not as a DIA-published statistic.

• Some charities may support veterans without using explicit keywords in name/purpose; a strict method will under-count by design (that’s acceptable if disclosed).

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A clean “Related Requests” box line you can reuse

• #33398 (closed) — established VAB does not hold a veteran-charity visibility list / signposting material (s18(e)).

• #33682 (new) — tests why the gap persists (decision-making/prioritisation/responsibility) without re-asking for a directory.

• DIA / Charities Services — provides the official sector-scale baseline (29,208 registered charities as at 2024/2025).